For Tech Execs It’s Not About the Money…This Just In: It’s About the Money

Isn’t funny how there tends to be disconnect between what technology execs say and what they mean?

Take Shashi Seth for example. When he left Google’s YouTube, he stated “Google got a little big for me.” Well, apparently the one year at Cooliris was enough to either a) throw us off the scent, or b) help Seth realize that he does actually like big companies after all. He just landed at AOL as the new SVP of global ad products.

Among his duties will be development of a self-serve ad buying system for AOL inventory…He’ll also have global oversight of Advertising.com and the company’s other display ad products.

Which leads us to believe that he’s either like most of us–in it for the money–or his stint at Cooliris helped him realize that the grass may be greener on the other side, but when it’s a small start-up, you have to mow the lawn and pull weeds yourself!

In other “executive musical chairs” news, MySpace CTO and co-founder Aber Whitcomb is leaving the social network and being replaced by MySpace Music’s current CTO Alex Maghen. TechCrunch is not surprised by the move:

The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise — we speculated that Whitcomb would be leaving as part of the core executive shakeup that swept through MySpace last April (if anything it’s surprising that Whitcomb stayed on this long).

Hey Whitcomb, Cooliris just had a position become available!

UK Internet Ad Spend Tops TV for the First Time

The headline is pretty spectacular, to be sure, if you are in the Internet marketing biz. The UK has become the first major world economy to report that online ad spending has topped that of television. The IAB put together numbers as reported by The Guardian that attests to the true coming of age of the Internet space as an advertising channel. Or does it?

Apparently, while there is a rush to make this announcement it is one of those situations that requires peeling back the onion a little bit more to see what may really be happening. Here’s a bit of background first

UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online.

The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.

Well done, chaps! (Please note: As a nod to Andy Beal’s British pedigree I fully acknowledge that any attempt to sound like him will come off as lame so save your breath). Interestingly enough, the IAB had predicted this to happen by the end of this year but the worldwide economic climate has sped the process as companies look to spend less and get more, at least theoretically.

As you might expect the TV side of the house is putting their 2 cents (or is that pence?) in on the subject.

Thinkbox, the UK TV marketing body, has taken exception to the IAB’s figures, arguing that the internet is now mature and diverse and it is inaccurate to collate all the figures as if it is one single medium.

“It is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it,” said Lindsey Clay, marketing director at Thinkbox. “Online marketing spend is made up of many things, including email, classified ads, display ads (including online TV advertising) and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually.”

In all honesty, I can’t say I completely disagree on that assessment. Online advertising as a whole is much more diverse than the option that TV presents. Maybe that’s TV’s trouble moving forward though. It’s a one trick pony that has just enough mileage on it that people are looking for a new ride.

So before the online ad world pops the cork on the champagne there are some sobering numbers that were reported in addition to some thoughts about the direction of online ad spend.

Despite the seemingly inexorable rise of internet ad spend, a closer examination of the IAB’s figures show that the recession has had an impact. In the first quarter £920m was spent on online advertising, representing 8.6% year-on-year growth. However, in the second quarter, spend fell almost £100m to £832m, representing only a 1.1% increase on the amount spent in the same period last year.

Not exactly setting the world on fire but not a negative number either. Hey folks, let’s face, this world economy sucks right now. If there is any expectation of big numbers then you should have your head examined. Even Microsoft reported its first sales decrease EVER in its history so go no further for evidence that we are far from being out of the woods.

So while interesting, we will need to sit tight to see any trend in this shift of ad dollars. The online space is struggling in another way right now as social media is overtaking the time that Internet users spend online but it has yet to show that it is a strong advertising play. How that turns out could affect the rest of the Internet advertising world in an adverse fashion. As you already know, that scenario is just starting to be played out so we’ll have to see. As a final note:

Adam Smith, futures director at WPP’s combined media operation Group M, argued that the internet’s share of total UK ad spend could be close to its peak.

“This day was bound to arrive, as the internet has been attracting a huge long tail of advertisers that have not advertised before doing completely new things,” he said. “It is a memorable event. However, it is a bit simplistic to make this comparison [and] it is always possible that internet’s share [of total UK ad spend] could go backwards if TV has a good year.”

So what is it Pilgrims? Is this the start of a trend or a blip on the radar for now?

Do You Actually Watch 157 Videos Per Month?

This week comScore has released the latest numbers regarding video viewed online and I am still scratching my head. According to the findings (remember class, repeat after me – “It’s research and research ain’t perfect”) in August of 2009 there were just over 25 billion videos viewed by the approximately 161 million US Internet users. That works out to be an average of 157 videos viewed per user during that time period. Google sites alone accounted for over 10 billion of those videos with 99% of that number coming from YouTube. This number eclipses the previous month’s results and I am wondering if this economy is a main contributor to this amount of ‘free time’.

I am still shaking my head. Maybe it’s just me but that seems ridiculously high. I am a heavy Internet user. I spend considerable hours everyday on the computer researching etc, etc but I come nowhere near watching 5 video clips per day. I admit I probably have the TV on too much so maybe being online is a vacation of sorts with regard to watching video. I don’t know. Am I just a really low user of online video content?

Take a look at the comScore chart below to see how just how dominant Google (which is 99% YouTube in this case) is in this space as well.

So help me here. If you fall in line with these numbers, meaning you are a profile match to the just over 5 videos viewed per day type, what is it that you are watching? Of course, this is rated PG blog for the most part so anything deviant just keep to yourself and continue seeking help but please don’t share it here.

In fact, let’s take a look at a specific type of video viewing. Let’s keep it to marketing / advertising / product related videos. As marketers we need to be careful not to just look at this large number and automatically assume that everyone is watching videos about products or something that is related to our work. I have learned to never underestimate the power and allure of “stupid human tricks” video viewing which could simply be an escape mechanism for people at their desks who can’t wait to get out of the office.

What if the percentage of videos viewed that relate to marketing functions is just a small fraction of the total audience? That would be the number that we should be paying close attention to and not chase video’s version of a shiny object that will end up eating up valuable time and resources.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to hearing from you.

FeedBurner Goes 301 All The Way

The Google AdSense for Feeds (aka FeedBurner) blog announced that all of their links will be 301 redirected, as opposed to some that are 301 redirected. In summary, when you use FeedBurner to create and host your RSS feed, FeedBurner creates special links that are used to send the reader to your web site. [...]

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Yahoo Search Ads Now On iPhone & Android Mobile Devices

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced that your search ads will now automatically be displayed on iPhone & Android mobile phones. Yes, Yahoo said, this is an automatic opt in for all advertisers.
Yahoo said, “As of today, your ads should begin appearing immediately on these devices for relevant searches, if they have not already.” [...]

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Top Microsoft Execs Get A Pay Cut

Appropriately top Microsoft executives, coming off  the “worst year ever” for the company, are sharing some of the pain. As PaidContent reports, the top executives at the company took a compensation hit based on the sales and revenue declines. Here are some of the numbers:

CEO Steve Ballmer $1.265 million vs. $1.34 million a year ago
CFO [...]

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Report: Most People Don’t Want Online Tracking Even If It Means Relevant Ads Or Savings

Get ready marketers: a credible new report with sweeping implications from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley is likely to be the nail in the coffin of self regulation of online advertising. Specifically I’m talking about behavioral targeting, which largely concerns online display advertising but does marginally touch search at Yahoo and Google.
The NY [...]

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The B2B Content Equation

B2B Internet marketers often struggle mightily with website content.
From an seo perspective, content is a key component in any successful search program (more keyword opportunities, longer tail terms, freshness to encourage more frequent crawls, internal cross-linking opportunities, inbound link building materials, etc.).
The most common obstacles to content generation that B2B marketers express are time and [...]

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Think Search Before You Name Your Next Product

When naming products, it’s always prudent to investigate potential online marketing challenges and pitfalls before launch. Failure to do so may preemptively damage your marketing team’s ability to cast an appropriate branding net.
Traditionally due diligence surrounding the naming process involved trademark search, category and creative considerations. Now that’s no longer enough. Crucial naming decisions [...]

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More Insight into YouTube

Mm, I love the smell of data in the work day. Introduced in March 2008, YouTube Insight data and stats on video usage. In May of that year, they added demographic data. And that October, they unveiled Click-to-Buy, which used their Content ID system to find copyright-violating music and video on UGC content on the site and slap ads on it that would pay the content owners (and also worked with media companies’ videos).

I know what you’re thinking. Wait a second, Jordan—the last one doesn’t have anything to do with data.

And you’d be right. Until now. YouTube’s Content ID and Insight programs are linking up—now data owners will be able to view stats from not just the videos that they own, but also others’ videos that use their content:

Previously, when you claimed a video with Content ID, we were only able to show you basic information (like view counts and tags) associated with the video you claimed. But now, all the statistics and data we share directly with uploaders in YouTube Insight is available to Content ID partners too, making our content management tools more useful than ever — especially for partners whose claimed user videos generate lots of views for them. For example, using Insight with claimed content, Sony Music learned that the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video is currently the music label’s 8th most popular video on YouTube.

Now content owners will have access to lots more data from UGC videos that use their content:

• rankings
• demographics
• discovery sources
• “other metrics for videos that you’ve claimed”
• and compare them to their own uploads

Yes, you’ll be able to tell if those two-bit hacks are totally upstaging you with their blurry, shaky video of amateur dancing and poor sound quality.

Ouch.

While I’m all for more data, I wonder if this isn’t going to be a gateway for abuse. The Content ID system is used to identify copyright-infringing videos—but often, if the content owners can advertise on the UGC videos, the users are given tacit permission to use the content. If the content owners get jealous of these videos’ status and rankings, might they request removal because of copyright violations?

Yeah, in the end it’d probably be shooting themselves in the foot—but seriously, when do people ever have that much foresight when it comes to the Internet and business?

What do you think? Shouldn’t content owners have access to data from all videos using their content? Or is this going to open the gateway for content owners’ world YouTube domination?

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